


sweet like cinnamon

by girlsonthetv



Series: akechi lives and is dating ryuji for some reason [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Sickfic, endgame spoilers, happy-ish, they're trying their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 02:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11591013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsonthetv/pseuds/girlsonthetv
Summary: Ryuji cares a frighteningly large amount and Akechi cares a frighteningly small amount. When Akechi gets the flu, they clash in a way that's been a while coming.





	sweet like cinnamon

A week previous, Ryuji had taken Akechi to the movie theater. Ann had snagged the role of the villain's sidekick with a significant amount of romantic tension with the hero and the villain in a new action movie, and Ryuji was determined to get Akechi out of the house on a semi-regular basis. He kissed him in the back of the movie theater, tasting of candy and soda. It's the best day Akechi's had since he died. 

The movie was good, with average acting at best on Ann's part, but Ryuji was confident that she would get better as she got more roles, and Akechi privately agreed. God knows he was terrible at the whole TV thing when he first started. 

On the bus ride home, some stranger had coughed wetly in his face, and Akechi was primed to fight them as Ryuji rubbed soothing circles into his back. They probably didn't mean to, Ryuji had said. Probably. But he got enough dirty looks for his scarred face that there was a good chance it was on purpose. 

Today, Akechi wakes up with every part of his body aching, his throat sore, his nose stuffed up, and his first thought is to wish for the death of that guy on the bus to the movies. The slow death. His phone goes off, and it takes every bit of energy that hasn't been sapped from him to pick it up. It's a text from Ryuji, predictably enough. He's been texting him semi-regularly as well. 

ryuji: morning <3<3  
ryuji: what's going on for you today  
Me: nothing, since I appear to have gotten the flu  
ryuji: ?!?!! have you taken medicine  
Me: i was kind of hoping the sickness would take me lol

Ryuji doesn't answer, and Akechi panicks a little before the panic is replaced with lethargy. He lays back down and lets his phone fall to the floor. He didn't realize how true his text was until he sent it. It was very sweet of the universe to keep giving him ways out of sticky situations, but he was done, thank you very much. He was tired of living when there was nothing for him but pointless survival. He was tired of being a cockroach.

He closed his eyes and waited for the sickness to take him. 

Somehow he must have fallen asleep, because Ryuji's apartment is much farther than ten seconds away from his but only ten seconds have passed from Akechi's point of view and he's here, shaking him gently, face white with fear. 

"Ugh, what?" Akechi mumbles, and Ryuji sighs, relieved. There's a bunch of stuff on the coffee table that wasn't there before - soup, a blanket, flu medicine, a carton of chocolate ice cream. Trappings of the sickbed. Akechi feels shame curdle in his belly and wants to dig himself a hole. 

"The ice cream is more for your emotions than your body. My mom always says you gotta eat some ice cream when you're sick." Ryuji explains. Akechi nods. He wouldn't know. Ryuji briefly disappears to put the ice cream in the freezer before coming back, still strung tight.

Ryuji pours out a dosage of flu medicine with slightly trembling hands and offers the little plastic cup to him, his expression a silent plea for him to take it. Akechi downs the sickly pink liquid like a shot of liquor, and Ryuji's anxiety is replaced with relief. "Here, sit up." He says, nudging Akechi into a sitting position on the couch and wrapping him in a thick wool blanket. "You'll feel better like this." 

Akechi sighs. He'll admit on his deathbed that he actually does feel better. "Why are you doing this?" 

"Because I care about you and I wouldn't be able to do anything else knowing you were sick." Ryuji mutters. "You want me to heat up the soup?" 

"I'm not really hungry right now." Akechi says. "Just sit here with me, okay? Let's watch TV." He managed to smile. He didn't want Ryuji to worry.

Ryuji looks genuinely happy, and Akechi feels some positive emotion bloom warm in his chest. Ryuji turns on the TV and throws his arm around Akechi's blanket-clad shoulders, and they lose themselves in some mindless rerun. It's 10 in the morning on a Sunday, nothing good is on. 

An hour passes, the flu medicine kicks in and Akechi's symptoms subside enough that he feels profoundly sleepy. "Thank you." He mumbles to Ryuji just before he drops off, and he thinks he hears a mumbled "Anytime."

He wakes up a few hours later when he smells soup, and his stomach growls. "Ryuji?" He says hoarsely, and he hears someone taking deep breaths near the microwave. Ryuji turns around holding a bowl of soup and a glass of water.

"You scared me." He says, coming to sit back down next to Akechi. "Drink the water, too; you need fluids to flush the sickness out." Akechi takes the bowl of soup and ignores the redness around Ryujj's eyes. Ryuji watches him eat intently, and Akechi might have chalked it up to weird ways Ryuji shows his affection if not for his other odd behavior. 

Akechi is not, at heart, an emotionally available young man. But Ryuji deserves what little he can provide. Ryuji has done so much for him, and he's provided snarky remarks and decent fucks. 

"What's bothering you, Ryuji?" He says softly. "You can tell me, I'm lucid enough to listen." 

Ryuji chuckles. "Nothing's wrong, babe. Just the usual anxiety. I'm not good at taking care of people."

"Hey, you're better at it than I am." Akechi puts the soup bowl down and cups Ryuji's face with his hands. The blanket falls off of him and he shivers but Ryuji is more important. "Tell me what's really wrong. You were crying earlier when I was asleep." It's not a question. Ryuji's eyes start to well up with tears and Akechi worries he messed up. 

"I was just thinking about your text earlier." He mumbles, putting his face in his hands as he shoves Akechi's away. 

"What, that?" Akechi says. 

"Yes, that!" Ryuji says irritably. "I know you like your gallows humor, but it scares me sometimes, because you're so resistant to any kind of help from anyone! And I'm scared that one of these days you're gonna make a joke and I'm not gonna think anything of it, and you're gonna be dead for real!" Ryuji got more and more choked up as he spoke, and Akechi reached out to give him a hug as Ryuji began to cry. 

"You always look so lonely." Ryuji hiccups. "Even when you're smiling. I don't know how to get it through to you how much I care." 

"Oh, Ryuji." Akechi says softly. "I'm sorry for worrying you." 

As Ryuji continued to cry, and Akechi continued to hold him, Akechi remembered the reason he was still alive in the first place. 

He was trapped behind the wall with his murderous cognitive self, fully prepared for death, but then he felt a surge of energy from the other side, from Akira, and the whispers of words in his ear. 

(thou has turned a vow into a blood oath...break the yoke of thy heart...granting thee infinite power.)

He felt his soul rearranging itself stronger and with a rush of speed and a newfound extra bullet shot his cognitive self right between the eyes. And he ran and he ran and he kept running and the flames burned his face but he kept going, and he burst into the real world and gulped breaths of sweet, fresh air. 

Two years passed, and he met Ryuji again. Months passed, and he was still alive thanks to him. He absolutely would have killed himself if Ryuji hadn't found him. This wasn't a wild guess, Akechi realized. It was something he knew. The difference between him and the cockroach was that he was loved, loved so dearly that it was enough for him to cheat death. 

So far, he had done a terrible job of repaying that. He decided then and there that he would do better. 

Ryuji finishes crying with a few soft sniffles and Akechi lets go of him. "I'm glad you told me." Akechi says simply. He takes the glass of water and drains it. "The least I can do is follow my doctor's orders. I know I've been horribly uncooperative for roughly the past six months." He beamed before breaking into a coughing fit. 

"Hey, hey, easy." Now it was Ryuji's turn to pat Akechi's back as he nearly hacked up a lung. That would show him to make emotional gestures. 

"Now seems like a good time to break out the ice cream." Ryuji says, hopping up to fetch the carton of ice cream and two spoons. He places the carton in between them and leans in to kiss Akechi. Akechi takes him by the face for the second time that day.

"Don't. I don't want to get you sick." 

Ryuji settles for kissing him on the forehead and feeding him ice cream. Of course, that results in his spoon being contaminated, so Akechi has to feed Ryuji if he's going to eat any ice cream, which he does with very little resistance to the idea.

/

"Hey, Akechi?" Ryuji asked as he was about to head out the door, as in, Akechi was quite literally shoving him out the door before his "roommate" got home, still wrapped in a blanket. 

"What is it?" Akechi asked dramatically, leaning against the door. 

"I'm getting ready to move into my own apartment soon, and I want you to move in with me." Ryuji said. "I think a good seventy percent of your depression is because you have to live in a place like this." 

Akechi bit his lip. "What about rent?" 

Ryuji laughed in the manner of someone who was expecting this question and had the answer. "I can hook you up with a job at the community center I'm workin' at. You won't even have to talk to people face-to-face that much, it's mostly paperwork." Ryuji's cocky expression faded to a soft smile. "Not the most glamorous, but you can't live off odd jobs forever." 

Akechi sighed. Smiled at Ryuji. "I'd like that, but we'll have to talk about it more." 

Ryuji pumped his fist and gave him a kiss on the forehead before running off. Akechi let a dreamy expression wash over his face as he headed back inside. Ryuji was the man he needed, and absolutely not the one he deserved. But they were okay.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry the end sucks


End file.
